Frostbite
by the-she-celt
Summary: Something unexpected, unanticipated, and entirely unforeseen is revealed in the wake of icy-cold water and a gruesome murder. A gift for someone special xxx


To any casual observer—though what's _casual_ about standing atop an eighteenth-century bridge still composed of carefully arranged white flagstones located across a particularly fast-moving branch of the Thames river approximately eight-and-three-quarter miles outside London is anyone's guess—Scotland Yard plus two seemed to have barely survived a zombie apocalypse. Twenty-six uniformed and heavily bundled-up men and women were straggling into the shadows beneath the bridge. Faces were flushed and sweating heavily. Chests were heaving, spewing bursts of white frosty breath into the frigid air as they fought to regain control over their lungs. Every single individual was massaging various bruised, scraped, pulled, or throbbing areas of the body, groaning, and muttering complaints—everyone except two figures.

Sherlock Holmes somehow managed to look even more brain-meltingly gorgeous in the frosty weather which infused his pale skin with pink. His eyes were glittering with excitement, and one corner of his Cupid's bow mouth was pulled upwards in a grin. Upright, though breathing heavily, he stalked to the edge of the bank, squatted, and anchored his steepled fingers to his lips, peering downwards into the rushing water. John Watson had the bright-eyed, giddily-grinning, vibrating expression of a young boy on Christmas morning. Hands on hips, he slowed from his run into a brisk pace up and down the bank, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, dragging great gulps of air between his grinning lips, catching his breath.

"COFFEE!" Donovan bellowed over one shoulder, in between pants. She was leaning heavily on Anderson, who was in turn slumped against the bridge. Fruitlessly shoving a wild curl off her sweaty forehead, she stabbed the red-faced Lestrade with her eyes. "_Eight hours_, Greg, and we're no closer to catching this maniac. Why the hell did you even call the Freak, he's not done anything useful except wear us all out."

"This coming from the woman whose major achievement within the last twenty-four hours has been identifying a dismembered bicep as 'an arm'." Sherlock retorted. John's grin widened. Donovan looked at the consulting detective's black curls as if there was a target painted on his scalp, but was prevented from any violence by the appearance of a pasty-faced intern juggling cups of coffee and paper bags of pound cake. She was attacked with the ferocity of wolves; Lestrade, Anderson, Donovan, and almost every other available officer dove for her load and wrestled them free of her grip.

"Oh, he thinks he's so _clever_, this one." Sherlock smiled with teeth like a shark's, eyes flint-sharp peering down into the tumbling whirls of white water below him. "_So _clever…"

"Clever?" Lestrade huffed him, massaging a stitch in his side. "I should say so, slippery bastard that he is—"

"_You_ might think so." Sherlock sniffed. The lines of his face seemed even sharper in the frigid January air. His cheekbones seemed to have discovered a new dimension.

"Don't you?" Lestrade rubbed his constantly streaming nose on his sleeve—again. He'd run out of tissues somewhere around Trafalgar Square—or had it been Tower Green? He was seriously beginning to lose track, after seven solid hours spent at a constant run around London—and over, under, sideways to, and every other conceivable physical relationship to London possible. His feet throbbed, his legs were numb, perspiration was freezing along his spine, his fingers, nose, lips, and cheeks were raw, and his stomach was whining like a kicked puppy.

"No." Sherlock leaned further forwards. Snowflakes were caught in his jet-black curls, and his coat swirled around his long legs like bat's wings. He was actually _grinning_, smirking from ear-to-ear at the sight of a bloody thumbnail half-embedded in the snow. "Cleverer than some, perhaps."

"But not you?"

The look shot from beneath Sherlock's eyebrows was a molten cocktail of derision, amusement, and pity. "Hardly." he snorted. He returned his gaze to the water below, eyes narrowing.

"He's going to keep us up until midnight at least." Donovan mumbled into her cup.

"If I had a penny for every time you've said that about a man…" Sherlock murmured. Donovan went scarlet.

"Coffee, Sherlock?" John asked, breath back under control once more. Folding his arms, he leaned against the bridge above Sherlock's head, craning his head to see into the water.

"Nooooo…" Sherlock leaned forwards still farther. John's hand attached itself to the fabric of his coat between his shoulderblades.

"Are you sure?" Lestrade peered over his other shoulder. "You've been awake for fifty-three hours."

"Adrenaline." John said absent-mindedly. "He'll sleep for a week once this is over."

"As it is about to be." Sherlock sprang upwards without warning, limbs unfurling like angel's wings. John sidestepped. Lestrade jumped and dropped his cup into the river. Over the barrage of his swearing, Sherlock caught John by the coat collar and tugged him closer to the bank. "_Look_, do you see it?"

"You know I don't, you showoff."

"_Honestly_, John, look at the stones on the bottom. The rapid movement of the weeds above and around them indicate that there is a secondary and far more powerful current moving over the bottom, therefore the surfaces of each rock exposed to the current is smooth."

"Yes…"

"Except that one." He pointed. A spectacularly large rock on the bottom was nestled amidst smoother rocks, jagged edges stabbing the swirling current around it.

"Oh—it's been recently moved."

"Exactly." Sherlock plucked his leather gloves off, folded them, and shoved them into one pocket.

"So you think the murderer hid the body _there?"_

"That stone's big enough to pin down the corpse of a six-foot-four-inches-two-hundred-sixty-five-pound man, even missing a few crucial bits, and the current is strong enough to slowly disintegrate it." Sherlock loosened his collar and yanked at his scarf, grinning like a maniac. "As I said, cleverer than some."

John whistled. "That is pretty smart. The body won't wash up on a shore and terrify the locals."

"More importantly, it'll cover her tracks."

"Her?"

"Oh, yes." Sherlock pulled his scarf away from his neck, and Donovan choked on her coffee. Directly above his collar, perfectly positioned behind his left ear, was a purple-red lovebite. It glowed against the white of his skin, so violently dark that is seemed to beat in time with his pulse. He continued without so much as glancing in her direction. "We currently have two possibilities before us: either the mother or the fiancée killed him."

"How do you plan to find out which?"

"Won't know until we can examine the body." Sherlock unbuttoned his overcoat in a flurry of long fingers, stripped it off, and tossed it towards Lestrade without glancing at him. His catlike eyes were fixed upon the chunks of ice bobbing merrily on the surface of the river.

"You're not going in after it!" John yelped.

"Of course I am. The longer we wait to examine it, the further away the murderer gets. Remember, the mother's on a flight to Bermuda tomorrow, and the fiancée is returning to Oxford this afternoon. We can't let her escape!" The black suit jacket was unceremoniously flung over Lestrade's head.

"But—" The DI sputtered, spat out a mouthful of silky fabric, tried again. "It's bloody freezing in there!"

Sherlock made no response. His pale fingers were busy at the neck of his deep plum shirt, but he'd only unfastened one button when John's fingers closed around his wrists.

"Wait." said John, and the world came to a halt. Throughout the assembly, mouths stopped chewing and gazes shifted from the bruise on Sherlock's neck to the doctor's blue eyes, gazing steadily into the blue-grey-green orbs of his flatmate. John's hands were steady. The fingernails of his right hand were dyed rusty brown after taking a sample from the neatly blood-filled bathtub in room eight-oh-seven of the King's Inn at approximately seven-fifty-two that morning. His palms were scraped from the ensuing climb out the bathroom window, along the row of the eighth-floor windowsills, onto the roof of the Inn, and down the slope of the roof three buildings over, following Sherlock as the detective traced an almost invisible trail of scuff marks from the crime scene over the rooftops. The doctor's neck was bare; he'd dipped his scarf in water and applied it to the forehead of a young officer who'd been violently ill after Sherlock, pinching a shredded piece of skin between forefinger and thumb, announced that the victim, a Hans Gunner, had been slashed to shreds with a razor and hung over the bathtub of his hotel room until most of his blood—approximately ninety-four percent, to be precise—had dripped into the bathtub, which explained the total lack of blood splatters in the bathroom. "Rather neat," Sherlock had remarked, as the flap of skin swayed in the stiff morning breeze, and John, one hand on the trembling back of the vomiting officer, had shot him a _look_ from beneath the fringe of his hair. That shaggy blond fringe was no plastered to his forehead after the ensuing seven-hour race through London, Sherlock spotting the almost-nonexistant trail of the murderer's trek over rooftops, through alleys, across streets, and through buildings. The path of scraps of shredded skin and scuff marks had led to the bridge, and for hours, John hadn't wavered, but for the clench of his jaw at the sight of each new grisly memento. But now the sparkle was gone from his eyes, and his gaze was hard as he held Sherlock's wrists.

"Is it necessary?" he said softly, voice barely louder than the sound of the water.

Sherlock dipped his chin in a nod, staring back unblinkingly.

John releases him. Sherlcok's fingers resumed their unbuttoning.

"Wha—hang on!" Anderson's voice returned at last in all its whiny glory. Sherlock's upper lip curled at its discrodnat symphony. "He's not actually going to do this? That water's below freezing!"

"You're not going in, so do shut up." Sherlock's eyes never left the froth curling around the bank of the river. His mouth curled upwards like a cat with a mouthful of cream.

"This is a suicidal!" Anderson yelped.

"He has a high tolerance for extreme temperatures." John spoke up calmly. His hand went to the zipper of his coat. As he pulled it down, Sherlock's gaze snapped round.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"You're not going in there without me." Shedding his coat, John placed it on the ground and pulled his jumper over his head .

"John—"

"Pushtan Mountains, mid-January, negative thirty degrees." John said firmly. "You go in with me or not at all."

Something warm and soft flared in Sherlock's eyes, but all attention was diverted from it when he shrugged off his shirt.

Donovan spluttered. The aquiline expanse of Sherlock's torso was seared red with horizontal bands of red across his back, spread uncannily like the bookshelves of the living room of 221B Baker Street, and deep purple bruises shaped distinctly like fingertips marched steadily along his hips.

And if that wasn't bad enough, John ripped two layers of shirts over his head in one fluid motion and an impressively maroon-brown set of bruises marching steadily down his throat, around his nipples, and down the expanse of his stomach into the waistband of his trousers was revealed.

"I'll dive." Sherlock whipped his belt from its loops with a crack.

"I'll hold you in the right place." John kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks, and shed his jeans with a few kicks of each leg. Anderson doubled over, coughing. A pair of soft, worn, red cotton briefs clung to the doctor's hips, identical in colour to the scratches revealed when he turned towards the river, scratches of fingernails running from broad shoulder to sturdy hip. The skin was a bright scarlet against the gold lines of his tanned skin. "Come on—over there."

Leaving a stunned silence to hover over Scotland Yard, the two men picked their way down the bank to the water's edge, where an old boathook protruded from between the stones of the bridge.

"Oh, _fuck."_ John swore between his teeth as he put on foot into the water. "Fuck, fuck, fuck…" Gripping the boathook, he swung the rest of his body into the water, head and shoulders held above the surface by his right hand's grip on the hook. "Come on, you git, let's get this over with."

Sherlock clasped John's left hand in his right and jumped, splashing straight into the water and resurfacing with his curls plastered to his forehead. "Right." He wiped water from his eyes. "If you would—"

John took hold of the proffered right ankle of the detective and Sherlock dove. Donovan shuddered, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders. The seconds ticked past, broken only by the splashes of water against the bank and John's steady stream of curses. His teeth were chattering.

Sherlock resurfaced, spat a mouthful of water, and dove once more. Finally, his head broke the whitecaps once more and, with John pushing his shoulder, swam to the bank.

"Well?" Lestrade asked anxiously.

Pressing his white lips together, Sherlock heaved an almost-skinless corpse onto the bank and Anderson yelped in disgust. The body was blue and white with cold. Both eyeballs, half the teeth, and the tongue were missing, as well as several fingers and toes. The remaining skin was slashed with razor cuts, none more severe than those that might be obtained during a morning shave, but so numerous that the skin had lost all coherency.

Sherlock hauled himself onto the bank, turned, and dragged John onto the grass. Lestrade offered towels, which each snatched and tried to apply to the other.

"Take this to the morgue." The DI instructed Anderson, who looked more revolted by the second. "Donovan, I want high-speed to Baker Street, now. Phone ahead and have Ms Hudson run hot baths for these two morons. And I'll go arrest—"

"The daughter. She was after her inheritance." Sherlock interjected.

"Right."

"You—stupid—prick." John enunciated quietly, frantically massaging feeling back into one of Sherlock's hands. "This was maybe the stupidest thing we've ever done."

"Agree to disagree." A smile creeping along the corner of his mouth, Sherlock tightened the towel around John's shoulders, rubbing fiercely along the skin.

"No, this takes precedence over the eyeball on toast from Monday." John blew hot air onto the long white fingers and cupped them in his own hands.

"And over shooting a cabby through two windows minutes before the police arrived?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow.

"Shut up."

"Make me."

John gave him another _look_. "Is this you…_flirting?"_ he inquired, voice light, as he blew once more onto Sherlock's fingers.

"That is customary in our circumstances, is it not?" Sherlock asked.

"Our circumstances?" John was definitely smirking now. "I'm not sure. What exactly are 'our circumstances'?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, catching sight of their audience in the process. "Don't look now," he murmured, eyes back on John's. "But I think we've caused Anderson a minor cardiac arrest." With the towel wrapped around John's waist, he trailed his fingers along the trail of lovebites marking the doctor's collarbones.

"Thank God it isn't summertime." John sighed, resting his fingers over the bruises on Sherlock's slim hips. "Or you'd go around like this all the time, wouldn't you?"

Sherlock's answer was a grin, and John groaned. "Arrogant sod."

"It's not arrogant to show off battle wounds." Sherlock adopted a lofty tone, but there was a wicked sparkle in his eyes.

John snorted. "Battle wounds?"

"Well, the fight was fast and furious." Sherlock's mouth was hovering by John's ear. "And involved a soldier."

"Doctor."

"Mmm…you had bad days."

"_That_ wasn't a bad day." John tightened his grip on the other man's waist.

"Most assuredly not." Sherlock dropped his head and pressed his lips, soft and sweet, against the shorter man's. John tilted his head, tongue flashing briefly in the space between their lips. Sherlock let out a sigh, fingers curling around the nape of John's neck.

"_Christ."_ Donovan swore, staring. Lestrade caught her by the elbow and swung her around to face the cars.

"That's ten quid you owe me." he said satisfactorily. "Go warm up the car, they'll be there in a minute."

"_Bloody Christ."_


End file.
